Sharpe’s Assassin
Bernard Cornwell (2021)
Bernard Cornwell has at least three great virtues as a novelist, and a writer of historical fiction particularly.
The first is his meticulous attention to historical detail, in manners, clothing, and other aspects of material culture, but most of all in his descriptions of military encounters. Weaponry, fighting tactics, even, and especially, what it may have felt like to be in a combat situation whether you were a Danish warrior in a shield wall, a confederate soldier at Manassas, or a British officer at Waterloo—all of these you will get with impeccable accuracy in a Bernard Cornwell novel.
Secondly, Cornwell’s style is precise, uncluttered, and visceral. The immediacy of the events is brought home to the reader without a fog of abstraction or overwriting: it’s as close to experiencing events as language can get you. And third, Cornwell has the ability to create rich characters with individual personalities and with agendas we feel quite ready to adopt for the duration of the book, even if they may be quite different from our own, if only because we put ourselves into their skin. Which is simply to say we accept his characters’ reality, we relate to them, and we root for them. Such is the case with Cornwell’s most popular character, Richard Sharpe, and his close friend, Sergeant Major Patrick Harper.
Which is why I, along with so many other lovers of historical novels, suffered severe trauma when Richard Sharpe finally faced his Waterloo in Cornwell’s 2006 novel Sharpe’s Fury. The Napoleonic wars having concluded, Sharpe seemed to be about to fade into the sunset over Normandy, where he would retire to a farm with his beloved Lucille and their son. And we’d have to make do with Uhtred of Bebbanburg and the Saxon kings. Not that that was such a bad thing, but come on. Sharpe is Sharpe.
Then came the news that, the Saxon tales having concluded, Cornwell was planning the return of Richard Sharpe in a new novel, fifteen years after we thought he was gone for good. And there was great rejoicing in the land.
I’m a little late to the party, having just recently learned that the new Sharpe novel, Sharpe’s Assassin, subtitled Richard Sharpe and the Occupation of Paris, 1815, had been published back in December. But not to worry: I quickly downloaded an Audible version of the book and listened to it on a flight to London. Believe me, nothing will make a nine-hour flight go faster than listening to a Bernard Cornwell novel on the plane. And I have this to report: Sharpe is still Sharpe, Harper is still Harper, and Cornwell is still Cornwell, even after a fifteen-year hiatus.
The story of Sharpe’s Assassin takes up immediately after the end of Sharpe’s Fury: Lieutenant Colonel Sharpe is with Sergeant Harper on the battlefield after Waterloo, personally digging the grave for one of the riflemen he was closest to. He’s summoned to a meeting with the Duke of Wellington by a young officer who fails to recognize the colonel: Working with his shirt off, Sharpe’s back shows the deep scars of a savage flogging he received as an enlisted man in India. The young officer does not realize what Sharpe fans know—or what new readers are about to discover: that Sharpe, the illegitimate son of a prostitute and a one-night-stand, born in the gutter and raised in the London slums, who joined the army to escape prison, has risen through the ranks, gained a battlefield commission from Wellington, and been steadily promoted due to one valuable contribution after another. Mostly, it’s because Sharpe has what his commander calls “the devil’s own luck” and because he “excels at dirty business.” And that’s why Wellington has called for him now.
While the rest of the army, including his own South Essex Regiment (“The Prince of Wales’ Own Volunteers”), is to march toward Paris to occupy the enemy capital, Sharpe’s new orders are to accompany Wellington’s spymaster Major Vincent to a fortification in the French town of Ham, where a number of English prisoners of war are being held, and to rescue the prisoners, specifically a certain Alan Fox. To talk about how Sharpe and Harper succeed in this task would be in the nature of a spoiler, but let’s just say they do, after which they head for Paris with Fox after freeing all the prisoners.
Why Fox is such a valuable prisoner is a bit puzzling at first. His chief purpose is apparently to catalogue the works of art that Napoleon and his armies have stolen from conquered territories around Europe for the purpose of restoring them to their rightful owners. There is a huge number of such works, which the French have stashed in an old palace called the Louvre, renamed the Musee Napoleon by Parisians. And while most of Paris is sick of war and relieved to see the Emperor abdicate, they do resent the loss of their artistic spoils, and Sharpe and his men are assigned to guard the museum.
But Fox proves to be more than an art trader: He’s also a spy (not really a spoiler there) who has unearthed a conspiratorial group of former devotees of the emperor who intend to continue French resistance, initially by assassinating the Duke of Wellington. The group call themselves la Fraternité—a name Sergeant Harper finds appropriate as he says, “The Frogs don’t have liberty, they certainly aren’t equal, so fraternité is all that’s left to the poor darlings.” Whether this group actually exists or whether rumors of its existence are simply “medieval claptrap” is debated for awhile, but we do learn that the group’s leader, or perhaps its only surviving member, is a certain Colonel Lanier, a vicious fighter known by the nickname le Monstre. Lanier has a reputation for finding pleasure in three things: “women wine and death to his enemies.” But Sharpe finds in Lanier a compellingly sympathetic counterpart—indeed in many ways his own double in a French uniform. Since much is made in this novel of Sharpe’s unknown paternity, I couldn’t help but wonder whether Cornwell was about to give Sharpe an unlooked-for brother. But I digress.
But la Fraternité is not Sharpe’s only problem. When he has finished his Ham-fortress adventure and returns to his battalion, he finds that, his regimental majors having fallen at Waterloo, Wellington has installed one Major Charles Morris in Sharpe’s company. Morris had been Sharpe’s commanding officer in India, and had ordered enlisted-man Sharpe flogged for no good reason. Sharpe also knows Morris to be a coward and unreliable in battle. After threatening to flog Morris himself if the major orders any of his men flogged, Sharpe takes on the task of foiling la Fraternité.
It’s no spoiler to say that Sharpe ends up in a pitched battle at the book’s climax, in which he performs his usual feats of courage and daring, though this time with a certain crankiness because, the war being over, it seems such a waste of lives and, besides, he just wants to make it to that farm in Normandy. And of course, Harper gets to use his famous seven-barreled gun. In a tunnel, no less, where Sharpe’s men are being fired on by an actual canon. And there is a rather melodramatic development toward the end of the novel which struck me as very non-Cornwellian, but it ends as quite vintage Sharpe.
You might think that the way the novel ends puts a pretty clear cap on Sharpe’s career, although he does leave things open with Willington that he might be available if the Duke needs him for something in the future. Besides, in a recent interview, Cornwell was asked whether he envisioned writing another Sharpe novel, and he answered in the affirmative. “Probably filling in gaps during the Peninsular War,” he has said, rather than some post-Napoleonic mission. But who knows? Anyway, if you like Cornwell, you’ll like this book. And if you just like historical novels and haven’t met Sharpe before, this is your chance!